Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Semifinal :: Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke

Our first semifinal in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books features Railsea by China Miéville going against Harmony by Keith Brooke. The book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages will reach the championship round.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages, cover art by Mike Bryan. Railsea reached the Final Four by defeating The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh in the first round and Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor in the second round.

Railsea takes place in a bizarre world where trains travel rails criss-crossing a deserted tundra to hunt moldywarpes, moles that grow to incredibly vast sizes. The molehunters' homes are on "islands" somehow constructed above the railsea. People live in mortal fear of the earth, and indeed, the one time our young protagonist Sham actually touches the ground he is immediately attacked by vicious mole rats. Sham's train is commanded by a female Captain Ahab, whose "philosophy" hinges on finding the moldywarpe that took her arm. (It turns out that in this world, every train captain has lost a limb and is obsessed with the land creature that claimed it.) Sham and the captain find a photograph of a strange place where only a single line of rail crosses the land, but the captain does not share Sham's fascination.

Harmony: Solaris paperback, June 2012, 413 pages, cover art by Adam Tredowski. Harmony (published in the UK under the title alt.human) reached the Final Four by defeating Wildcatter by Dave Duncan in the first round and The Croning by Laird Barron in the second round.

In Harmony, the Earth has long been occupied by multiple races of aliens, who have herded humans into "Ipps," Indigenous Peoples' Preserves. Our teenaged hero Dodge scratches out a living in the Craigside Ipp, which is visited by refugees from another town, Angiere, where aliens recently slaughtered nearly all the humans. Dodge also rescues a strange woman who lacks the "pids," personal identifiers, aliens have placed in all humans' bloodstreams. Tellingly, her name is Hope. A single chapter from Hope's point of view tells us she was in Angiere just before its destruction, which likely was no coincidence. Meanwhile, Dodge learns that a group of aliens is trying to help the humans, while others would prefer simply to wipe us all out.

The Battle: My guiding criterion in the Battle of the Books is not which book is better but which book do I most want to keep reading. Usually those are the same——I'd rather keep reading the book I think is better——but not always. Case in point: if you ask me which, Railsea or Harmony, strikes me as a better book after 100 pages, I will hem and haw and sincerely tell you they are both very good, but in the end I will say Railsea is probably the better of the two. Both books are very much about cognitive dissonance, creating a sense of strangeness, and nobody but nobody does weird better than China Miéville. The railsea is a striking construct, and his multi-layered world is wonderfully memorable.

But Harmony also contains plenty of interestingly strange elements, for instance the way humans have learned to convey immediate emotional responses through alien clicks instead of facial expressions. And I'm more attached to Harmony's key characters, Dodge and Hope; the only character developed so far in Railsea is Sham, and he doesn't much grab me so far.

There is a terrific scene at the end of the first 100 pages of Harmony where the aliens carry off the leaders of Dodge's community, then an alien asks the remaining people who is their leader now, and Dodge is startled to realize they are all looking at him. This tells me much about his personality, and it suddenly makes those around him his people in a deeper sense, which makes me care more about what happens to them all. This in turn makes me care about where the story is headed. I want to know whether Dodge can navigate the strange alien politics he has been caught up in, and whether he and Hope and Dodge's people can survive, and perhaps even find their way to a freer life.

In contrast, in Railsea, it doesn't matter to me very much whether Sham finds the place with only one railway line, or whether the captain tracks down her great white moldywarpe.

But wait! some of you cry. If Harmony has stronger characters and a more compelling storyline, doesn't that mean it was really the better book all along? Hmm, I answer. You could be right. If so, then what you're telling me is the Battle of the Books format is the best way to test how good a book really is. What an intriguing suggestion!

THE WINNER: Harmony by Keith Brooke

Harmony advances to the championship round, where it will face either Nightglass by Liane Merciel or The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five :: Final Four

Here we go! After completion of the second round, we're down to the Final Four in Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books:

Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke

Nightglass by Liane Merciel vs. The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. This sixteen-book bracket, our fifth, contained books from across the genre. There were science fiction, contemporary fantasy, high fantasy, historical fantasy, and horror books. Hopefully some sparked your interest. I know there are books that I (Amy) would like to read. Now only four books remain.

Stopping reading good books after only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult, and so can judging between two completely different books, but this format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

Three of the four "seeded" books made it to the Final Four: Railsea, Harmony, and The Testament of Jessie Lamb. The dark horse of this group is Nightglass, which is a tie-in to the Pathfinder role-playing game.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. More brackets are to come!

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, Second Round :: Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor vs. Railsea by China Miéville

We begin the second round of Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books with Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor vs. Railsea by China Miéville. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after the first 50 pages.

Ghost Key: Tor hardcover, August 2012, 351 pages, cover photo by Marta Bevaqua. Ghost Key reached the second round by defeating Kangazang! Star Stuff by Terry Cooper.

Ghost Key is the sequel to Esperanza. Both books concern the struggle against malevolent spirits called "hungry ghosts" or "brujos." The first 25 pages were from the point of view of Kate Davis, a middle-aged bartender in the Florida keys embroiled in strange happenings she does not understand, and Nick Sanchez, a "remote viewer" for the government who senses the Florida disturbance but does not know what it represents. The second 25 pages are from the point of view of two characters who know perfectly well what is going on. Wayra, a centuries-old werewolf, arrives in Florida following the scent of his former lover Dominica. Apparently in Esperanza, Wayra defeated Dominica's plans to create a city of ghosts, but she has escaped to try again.

The next section gives us the point of view of Dominica herself, who is indeed attempting to create a city of ghosts in the Florida keys. She has recruited some 200 hungry ghosts (although so far "horny ghosts" might be a more accurate moniker), who have occupied the bodies of living humans. The section ends with Maddie, the human woman occupied by Dominica, managing to make contact spiritually with Nick Sanchez.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages, cover art by Mike Bryan. Railsea advanced to the second round with a win over The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh.

The opening pages of Railsea introduced us to a strange world where trains cross a deserted tundra in search of moldywarpes, moles that can grow to incredibly vast sizes. Our young protagonist Sham is experiencing his first moldywarpe hunt, on a train led by a female Captain Ahab, determined to find the moldywarpe that took her arm. In the second 25 pages, we learn a little more about the nature of this strange universe, composed of six layers, of which the railsea and the moldywarpes' subterranean lair are the bottom two. We then see Sham try to rescue two small birds thrust into a cockfight. The exhiliration of the resulting chase emboldens Sham to sneak onto a cart dispatched from his train to investigate another train lying on its side off the rails, a salvage venture which quickly turns dangerous.

The Battle: Ghost Key is populated with pretty standard fantasy creatures, werewolves and evil ghosts and such. But Trish MacGregor ties them together effectively, and does a nice job in generating interest in her characters. I particularly liked the section from the point of view of hungry ghost Dominica, who is flabbergasted at the suggestion that she and her followers are evil. "Brujos weren't evil. They only wanted to experience physical life."

What immediately stands out about Railsea is the bizarre setting. But equally impressive is Miéville's depiction of his protagonist Sham, a kind-heaerted lad who yearns for adventure but is intimidated when he finds it. Here, for instance after sneaking onto the salvage cart, he is called into action as the only one small enough to fit through a wedged doorway:

"I ain't even supposed to be here." Sham hated how his own voice suddenly quavered to his own hearing. But he was here, wasn't he? Snuck on in a sudden pining for excitement, & the universe had called his bluff. His job was to apply bandages & brew tea, thanks very much, not to haul arse into sealed-off wrecks.

Oh Stonefaces, he thought. He didn't want to go into the cabin——but how he wanted to want to.

* * *

All his crewmates were looking at him. Was it shame or bravery that made Shem say yes? Ah, well. Either way.

What Sham encounters on the other side of the door makes for engrossing reading.

While I'm not a huge fan of urban fantasies, I can appreciate them when they're done well, and so far Ghost Key is done quite well. If you like urban fantasy, you should check it out. But given a choice, I respond more to a fantasy story with original and unusual concepts, and Railsea is unlike anything I've read before.

THE WINNER: Railsea by China Miéville

Railsea advances to the semifinals of Bracket #5, to take on either Harmony by Keith Brooke or The Croning by Laird Barron.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Round :: Railsea by China Miéville vs. The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh

We continue the first round of Bracket Five of Battle of the Books with Railsea by China Miéville vs. The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Railsea: Del Rey hardcover, May 2012, 424 pages. China Miéville is arguably the most important British fantasist of this generation. His second novel Perdido Street Station largely created the New Weird subgenre. His unclassifiable novel The City and the City won a Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award and Arthur C. Clarke Award, among the numerous awards and honors Miéville has received. Just this week, Railsea was nominated for the Andre Norton Award for young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Railsea is an homage to Moby Dick. Instead of a ship hunting whales on the sea, in Railsea the crew of a train hunts giant moles (moldywarpes) through a frozen tundra criss-crossed with rail lines. Already there have been hints that the captain has a vendetta against a particular moldywarpe that took her arm on a previous venture. Our protagonist Sham is the young apprentice of the train's doctor. Sham has no particular interest in medicine, or in very much else. But in the opening 25 pages of the book, Sham thrills to the hunt as his fellow trainsmen successfully pursue a vast moldywarpe.

The Express Diaries: Innsmouth House hardcover, September 2012, 290 pages, cover art by Eric Smith. Nick Marsh is a British veterinary surgeon, who has previously written a fantasy novel called The Ancients, and the first two volumes of a science fiction series, Soul Purpose and Past Tense.

The Express Diaries is an epistolary novel, set in 1925 and told through the characters' respective diaries, as well as news clippings and other documents which we can imagine inserted into the pages of the diaries. The main characters are all friends of the wealthy and eccentric London widow Betty Sunderland. In the opening 25 pages, an acquaintance of theirs is killed for what he knows of a strange artifact called the Sedefkar Simulacrum. Before he dies, he begs the group to find this artifact and destroy it. His notes describe various locations in Europe containing clues or portions of the artifact. Mrs. Sunderland persuades her friends to undertake this quest, traveling via the Orient Express, where we expect most of the story to occur. The premise of The Express Diaries is drawn from the "Horror on the Orient Express" campaign for the Lovecraftian role-playing game Call of Cthulhu.

The Battle: Aside from separating the four "seeded" books into different quarters of the draw, I do the Battle of the Books bracket entirely randomly, yet we repeatedly get interesting matchups. Here, for instance, we have a first-round matchup between two books both set on a train. (We've only had one previous train book in the Battle of the Books, Christopher Fowler's Hell Train, which reached the semifinals of the Spring 2012 Battle.) So far, both Railsea and The Express Diaries have succeeded in interesting me in the trains at the heart of their stories.

The epistolary format of The Express Diaries seems a bit limiting, but Nick Marsh has done a nice job of using the diarists' formal language to contrast with the strangeness of his grotesque imagery, for example when one of the characters reports finding a body that has been entirely skinned. While we haven't yet reached the Orient Express in the first 25 pages, Marsh has effectively suggested what evil and sinister forces await our heroes when they board.

In Railsea, China Miéville employs similarly stilted language, emulating Herman Melville, but still manages to convey Sham's exhilaration in their wild trip across a strange landscape:

Sham was awed at the light. He looked up into the two or more miles of good air, through it into the ugly moiling border of bad cloud that marked the upsky. Bushes stubby & black as iron tore past, & bits of real iron jagging from buried antique times did, too. Atangle across the whole vista, to & past the horizon in all directions, were endless, countless rails.

The railsea.

I confess I have never been a great Herman Melville admirer, but then Melville never made whaling seem so exciting to me as the bizarre moldywarpe hunt at the beginning of Railsea. Nick Marsh hasn't done anything wrong in the opening of The Express Diaries, but he had the misfortune to be paired against one of the very best writers in our field, who has once again created a remarkably original and unique vision, of which I'd like to see more.

THE WINNER: Railsea by China Miéville

Railsea moves into the second round, where it will take on Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Glen Duncan Is A Dick

[The following screed reflects the opinions of contributor Aaron Hughes, and not necessarily the views of the Fantastic Reviews Blog. It concerns an issue about which Hughes is perhaps a tad oversensitive, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.]

I've never met Glen Duncan, so I don't know if he's always a dick. What I know is he made a dick of himself with this review in the New York Times. Duncan reviewed Zone One by Colson Whitehead, a new zombie novel by a respected mainstream author.

Duncan begins his review: "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star." In this analogy, genre fiction is the porn star, sexy but stupid, while the intellectual is Colson Whitehead. Much more to the point, the intellectual is Glen Duncan, also a mainstream author who has dabbled in genre tropes, particularly in his most recent novel The Last Werewolf and its forthcoming sequels (which have made him Britain's second most successful fantasy novelist named "Duncan," behind Hal Duncan). Glen Duncan's review is in large part a self-serving complaint about the mistreatment "literary" novelists receive when they write genre. So, for example, when Duncan warns Whitehead that uncultured Amazon reviewers will fail to appreciate his intellectual approach to zombie fiction, we can safely infer that Duncan has been closely studying his own Amazon reviews.

Let me offer a counter-analogy to Glen Duncan's porn star comparison. Glen Duncan fancies himself an intellectual, so we'll picture him as a college professor. And since he doesn't see anything wrong with dropping casual references to women as mindless bimbos, let's place him in the 1950's. Duncan is at a faculty party when the new associate professor arrives with his wife, so gorgeous and shapely one might say she looks like a porn star. Duncan enviously snickers to the other tenured professors in the corner about what hot sex the new guy must be getting, but he never speaks to the fellow's wife long enough to realize she is the smartest person in the room.

In his review, Duncan snickers that knuckle-dragging genre readers will balk at Whitehead's use of terms like "cathected" or "brisant." He makes a point of dropping fancy terms of his own -- I had to scratch my low brow at his reference to "ludic violence." But China Miéville, arguably the most important British fantasist of the current generation, doesn't shield his genre readers from his extensive vocabulary. If Duncan hasn't read Miéville, how about J.G. Ballard and Thomas Disch, British authors who were using lots of them big words in their genre fiction before Glen Duncan learned to stop sucking his thumb? Duncan's assertion that authors must dumb down their language to satisfy genre readers is demonstrably false, and only reveals his own appalling ignorance of the genre he is currently writing in and writing about.

(As an aside, Colson Whitehead doesn't seem to share Duncan's insulting and condescending attitudes. He recently admonished literary purists asking why he would write genre fiction, "Don't be such a snob." So we should try not to hold Duncan's deplorable review against Whitehead.)

I will grant Duncan that genre readers have less tolerance than "literary" mainstream readers of aimless meanderings in their fiction. In his review of Zone One, Duncan is untroubled to declare that the book has no plot, and he snidely dismisses anyone who might dislike this as suffering from "limited attention span." But could it be that genre fans are simply more discerning readers? The strength of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genre is that most of its authors seek to combine an effective writing style with an engaging story. And once you become accustomed to books that tell a good story, you can quickly lose patience with those that don't.

A few days before Duncan's obnoxious review, the New York Times published a more thoughtful review of recent genre fiction by Dana Jennings. Jennings correctly identified Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" as one of the most powerful stories of the past decade. "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" is a ghost story by a genre writer, but I would be surprised to learn that Glen Duncan has ever in his career written a passage as beautiful or thought-provoking.

Of course, not all genre fiction holds to this level. A few authors have found great commercial success despite clunky prose, by keeping their stories moving along and usually by including plenty of sex. But a great many science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors take a far more literary approach to the genre. And the readers who enjoy their literary genre fiction are in many cases the same readers who made Glen Duncan's Last Werewolf a success. If Duncan would like the sequel to earn out its advance, he had best hope that his readers were too busy watching porn to read the New York Times this weekend.

Aaron's 2011 Hugo Recommendations :: Best Novel

Hugo nominations are due in just a week, so it's past time to list my favorite SF/F of 2010, starting with best novel. These are the five novels I'm planning to nominate:

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Aliette de Bodard, Servant of the Underworld
Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven
Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
Catherynne M. Valente, The Habitation of the Blessed

I expect the Bacigalupi novel to make the final ballot, and I think the others all have at least a chance at nomination, except perhaps Servant of the Underworld. (If de Bodard is nominated this year, it will be for one of her outstanding pieces of short fiction.)

As usual when selecting novels to nominate for the Hugo, I am dismayed to realize how many books from last year by some of my favorite authors I've yet to read. If I could stop time and read everything I'd like to before the nominating deadline, these are the ones I think would be most likely to elbow their way onto my list:

Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail
Greg Egan, Zendegi
Ian McDonald, The Dervish House
China Miéville, Kraken
Connie Willis, Blackout/All Clear

Whether you agree with any of my choices or not, I hope you find time to nominate by next week.

Aaron's Take on the 2010 Hugo Nominees :: NOVELS

The biggest problem with this year's best novel category is that there is only one rocket to go around. I like to see the Hugo Award go to a novel that is unique and memorable and thought-provoking and superbly written. Three of this year's nominees, the Bacigalupi, Miéville, and Valente novels, meet those criteria for me.

Out of a very strong field, my #1 choice is The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Bacigalupi is only the third author of the past 25 years to see his first novel nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and The Windup Girl is just the sort of once-in-a-generation reading experience that suggests. The novel combines an absorbing story with one of the most fascinating settings I've ever encountered, Bacigalupi's vision of future Thailand. Paolo Bacigalupi will be one of the leading voices of the SF field (and all of literature) for as long as he wants to be. A Hugo Award would be a great way to urge him on to a very long writing career.

China Miéville's The City and the City also features a tremendously inventive setting, the coexisting cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma. The way the inhabitants of both cities learn to unsee one another is fascinating and a powerful metaphor for how people manage to train themselves to avoid facing what is right in front of them. I enjoyed this novel throughout, even though the murder mystery plot is not entirely successful.

Catherynne M. Valente writes in a lush, ornate style that I would detest, except that she does it so exceedingly well. Palimpsest is a beautifully written novel, with striking imagery and a great deal to say about love and sex and the barriers that separate all of us. Valente is one of the very best authors in our field, and I am delighted Palimpsest received a Hugo nomination.

For me, whether I enjoy Robert J. Sawyer's work usually turns on if the ideas of a particular book are interesting enough to overcome the clunky writing. The ideas in WWW: Wake, including a blind woman gaining sight as she encounters an emerging intelligence existing in the Internet, would be strong enough to pass that test but they didn't have to, for I didn't find the writing of WWW: Wake clunky at all. In particular, I would not have thought Sawyer up to the challenge of conveying what it might be like for a blind person to gain eyesight for the first time, yet I found those passages in this novel very powerful and moving. Still, Sawyer can't quite compete with Paolo and China and Cat.

I enjoyed Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, a steampunk zombie adventure that has a lot more going for it than that gimmicky hook might suggest. As described in more detail in my review, Boneshaker is most entertaining, even if not tightly written, but does not compare favorably with the other outstanding works in this category. The same is true for me of Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Comstock, about which I will say nothing more, because I must confess the novel didn't catch my interest enough for me to finish reading it.

With the range and quality of works on this ballot, this is an exciting time to be a science fiction and fantasy reader. I wish I were down under right now, to see one of these outstanding authors receive his or her well-earned recognition.

Aaron's Ballot for Best Novel
1. Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl
2. China Miéville - The City and the City
3. Catherynne M. Valente - Palimpsest
4. Robert J. Sawyer - WWW: Wake
5. Cherie Priest - Boneshaker
6. Robert Charles Wilson - Julian Comstock

Aaron's Hugo Recommendations :: Best Novel

If I had to submit my Hugo nominations today, these are the novels I would nominate (in alphabetical order by author):

Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring
Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl
China Miéville, The City and the City
Ken Scholes, Lamentation
Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest

I fully expect the Bacigalupi and Miéville novels to make the final ballot, and I would love to see any of the others recognized as well.

Obviously, there are many great novels from 2009 I have not yet read. Given what I know of the authors and what I've heard about the books, these are the five I suspect have the best chance of moving into my list, in the unlikely event I am able to read them in the next ten days:

Daryl Gregory, The Devil's Alphabet
Malinda Lo, Ash
Adam Roberts, Yellow Blue Tibia
Jeff VanderMeer, Finch
Walter Jon Williams, This Is Not a Game

I will update if my list changes before the 13th.